187 Reasons Mexicanos Can T Cross The Border

I consider Juan Felipe Herrera’s poetries in 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border to be very interesting. There were times where Herrera was hinting at certain people and things without stating the obvious, which I found enjoyable. For the most part, his poetry was confusing for me, but in a good way. I was curious to get to the bottom of his messages.

The boldness of Herrera’s poetry just made me want to read more. The section that particularly struck me was “Mexican Differences Mexican Similarities”. I could tell that Herrera was comparing and contrasting the way of life between Mexicans and Americans. His parallelism between the two cultures made it easier for me to relate to. It reminded me about the racial separation between African Americans and Caucasians in the United States. I feel as if my own experiences with race and division contributed to the way I took in the message being told by Herrera. I was looking through the perspective of myself, especially due to the recent events happening in the United States.

I must admit, after reading this section I was biased.

I felt more for Mexicans because of the way they were particularly illustrated. Typically, the Mexicans were the ones usually tending to Americans. I could feel the minority complex that Herrera was establishing within the words of his poem. The theme of individualism versus collectivism was very much present in ““Mexican Differences Mexican Similarities”. My mood for the majority of this poem was negative, yet I re read the poem just to try to note the positive aspects of Herrera’s poem. I was trying to look through different lenses, but at the end of the way I still feel as if I was more biased to one side –the

Mexicans.

The two lines that stuck with me was when Herrera wrote “[y]ou sit at the table we serve the table. You dance on the floors we mop the floors…” (Herrera 38). The mood of these two lines was serious, yet not too intense. The ability of the author to use everyday activities and jobs to explain such a division between two cultures made all of the analogies stick out even more. The lines of this poem were filled with such vivid imagery of how it feels to be a Mexican as opposed to an American. I was sitting at my desk thinking, “wow this is real life?”. It made me feel as if I needed to reevaluate how I consider myself among others. Am I or am I not entitled to certain things? How does my culture compare to others? Is this a good thing or bad thing? The questions kept popping up in my mind, yet I still couldn’t come up with an answer.

What I thought was particularly important was the way the poem ended. Humans, in this case Mexicans and Americans, all have similarities; yet no one will ever point them out. Instead we tend to only note negative things, such as differences (Herrera 40).